Nathan Massey's dashboard

I would love to use the Voice Control feature on my iPhone in my car to start calls and control music, but the cradle for my iPhone in my car covers the microphone on the bottom of the device, so Voice Control doesn't work.

I use a handsfree system in my car to make calls so it would be great if the iPhone could use Voice Control using the microphone from the handsfree kit.

This way I could just press the home button on my iPhone to activate Voice Control, speak, the microphone in the car would pick up the speech, pass it to the iPhone over Bluetooth, and the iPhone can do the appropriate command (play music, call someone etc).

On a similar note, it would be good if I didn't have to reach across to press the home button on my iPhone to activate Voice Control. Maybe the iPhone could just constantly listen out for commands when it knows it's connected to a in-car handsfree system? Or how about some kind of Bluetooth peripheral you can attach to the steering wheel that will activate Voice Control (so I don't have to take my hands off the wheel)?

Often when i'm driving with my iPhone hooked up to the handsfree system in the car, i'll get a SMS/email. At the moment, I just get the little *ding!* noise come through the car stereo to let me know i've received a new message, but it would be even better if my iPhone could read out the message to me using the Text to Speech functionality in OS X.

Ideally it would be set up in such a way that text-to-speech is only activated when the iPhone is connected to car, as I wouldn't want it turned on all the time.

You could have it so that the whole SMS message is read out (along with who sent it), and just the subject line and sender for emails.

It would be even cooler if you could have it setup for the iPhone to ask if you want to hear the whole email, and you could respond using Voice Control. For example, a new email would go like this,

*New Email Noise"

iPhone: "From: Jonny Appleseed"

iPhone: "Subject: This Years Christmas Party"

iPhone: "Would you like to hear the rest of the email?"

User: "Yes."

iPhone: "Hey Steve, I've arranged for the christmas party to start at 8pm. Is that OK? Thanks, Jonny."

You could then use voice control to "Call Jonny Appleseed", or maybe reply to the email with some kind of speech to text functionality.

One thing i've never understood about bank statements is why the information about each payment you make is so small. Wouldn't it be good if when looking at your online bank statement, you could click on individual payments to see more details about it?

For example, at the moment, all you have now on your statement is something similar to this,

15/12/2009 Card Purchase -£451.32
JOHN LEWIS
REF 345 1342212323312 BCC

Now that isn't very informative at all.

Imagine if you could click on the name of the store where you made your purchase, and up popped at Google Map with all the stores details (location, opening hours etc).

What if you clicked on the amount you paid and you were shown a virtual receipt from the store showing what individual items you've bought (which would be really useful if you need to claim back things like petrol on expenses).

Having this extra information would really help when using services like Mint.com that analyse your spending habits to save you money.

This is the kind of thing I would like to see.

15/12/2009 18:23 Card Purchase
John Lewis Sheffield, Barkers Pool, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 1EP

Playstation 3 Console £249.99
UPC: 90123441231

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare £29.99
UPC: 01223112234

Playstation 3 Dual Shock Controller £24.99
UPC: 23432355543

TOTAL: £304.97

Also, why does it take a few DAYS for new purchases to appear on my online statement? It's almost 2010, this sort of thing should happen instantly in real-time!

Please add Leeds to foursquare!

I find it really annoying that Sky only let you use their Sky Player service on just 1 Xbox 360. We have two 360's at home, and it would be great to have the service on both consoles.

I think it would be a good idea if PC World stopped selling software as a 'boxed product' in it's stores, and instead had a system that printed download URL's and license/product keys on the customer's receipt.

It would work a lot like how a iTunes Gift Card works.

It would basically work like this,

1. A customer comes into PC World wanting to buy a particular bit of software.

2. Over on the software section, there isn't a bunch of CD's on the shelf, but rather DVD-box sized pieces of cardboard, that have the software's cover on the front, and some info about it on the back (much like a regular DVD box), and a barcode.

3. The customer takes the piece of cardboard to the till, where it is scanned in, and when the receipt is printed out (or emailed to the customer) the customer would see something like below,

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (289562) £99.95
Download at: microsoft.com/uk/office/download
Product Key: FHTT67-643566-FSZBYU-QQERFF

Symantec Norton 360 (305257) £59.95
Download at symantec.com/norton/download
Product Key: REWSD-122AA-FDGHH-QQ33FF

4. When the customer gets home they simply use the information on the receipt to download and install the software on their computer.

This would save PC World the cost of large amounts of shelving to merchandise software, as the pieces of cardboard could be merchandised on pegs instead (which are cheaper).

It would also save the manufacturers of those software titles in pressing discs and boxing them up, and PC World in shipping the software out to stores (and replenishing that stock every week).

PC World would only have to send out maybe 100 DVD-sized pieces of cardboard for each title, and as these are not given out to customers when they buy, can be reused after each sale.

I understand the PC World currently sell a 'netbook' edition of some titles like Norton 360, but these still require the boxed product to be made and resupplied to stores each time a store runs out of stock. The solution i've suggested means that the product is supplied electronically, so every store in the country will never run out of stock.

For customer who don't have Internet access, or aren't comfortable downloading software on their own, PC World could offer a service through The Tech Guys to download the software onto a USB stick or CD/DVD for a additional fee (plus the cost of the media), or the customer could bring in their computer and have the software installed directly by a technician.

It would be cool if when ordering from Dominos using the mobile iPhone web app (or the website) if your order could be posted to your Facebook profile or tweeted out on Twitter.

For example, on Facebook you would have a item added to your feed that says,

"Nathan just ordered a Pepperoni Supreme from Dominos!"

You would also have a picture of the pizza along with the post, along with a description of what the pizza has on it. You could also include a link back to dominos.co.uk for that specific pizza.

On Twitter, you could have a similar sort of thing,

"Ordered a Pepperoni Supreme from Dominos." #dominos

I was reading this article on the BBC News website (Police open up to social media) and went to look if my local NPT had a Twitter account too. They don't.

I think the idea of each NPT having a account on Twitter is great, as it would help to keep the public informed as to what the Police are doing in their local area.

There are a couple of NPT's in West Yorkshire that already have Twitter accounts, but it would be good to see all of them have one.

Millgarth NPT - http://twitter.com/MillgarthNPT
Morley NPT - http://twitter.com/MorleyNPT

It would be quite handy if PC World allowed you to buy services from the Tech Guys when you reserve items to collect in store.

For example, if you were reserving a laptop to collect, but you knew you wanted it's memory upgraded to something bigger, you should be able to click a check box for a 'memory upgrade', then when you go to collect your new laptop in-store, the Tech Guys will have already done the upgrade for you, saving you a additional trip to the store (you would usually reserve the laptop, then ask for the upgrade, go home, and come back when it's done).

You could offer other services like in-store setup (e.g. you reserve a laptop with Norton and Office, and they would be installed onto the laptop for you ready to go).

With this system you would pay for everything online before coming in-store as you could have people reserving stuff that has had upgrades/setups then don't come to collect it.